I’m wondering if this is one of those situations where there is more to the story than we are being told. Perhaps the phone is the way the mother keeps in touch with her daughter and when the father took it away, it made it difficult to stay in touch. In this day and age the telephone is the easiest way to keep up communication with people. There may not even be a landline in the father’s home. My first reaction to the story was that the father was being a real father on the mother was being a jerk. Now I wonder what else there is that we don’t know about the situation.
Correction.... “My first reaction to the story was that the father was being a real father AND the mother was being a jerk”
In a sane world, the people who brought the charges would now themselves be up on charges of abusing their offices for a vendetta.